Despite the sharp plunge in local shares, the Chicago volatility index, which gauges implied market volatility, is at its lowest point in almost six years. But keep in mind the index finished at the close of markets in the US on Friday.

The sharemarket has finished sharply lower, the benchmark S&P/ASX200 fell 104.8 points, or 2 per cent, to 5015.4, while the broader All Ords lost 101.9 points, or 2 per cent, to 5027.

3:53pm on 18 Mar 2013

A bid to halve Sunday penalty rates for workers in the retail, fast food and hospitality industries has been rejected by the national workplace relations tribunal.

The Fair Work Commission (FWC) handed down its decision on Monday to keep penalty rates unchanged, following a 15-month review process in which groups such as the National Retail Association, the Queensland Chamber of Commerce and Industry and Ai Group made submissions.

The groups sought to halve the penalty rates paid to employees on Sundays and remove the 25 per cent penalty rate for evening work.

The bid would have affected workers in the fast food, food and beverage, general retail, hair and beauty and general hospitality industries.

But a full bench of the FWC on Monday said ‘‘a case had not been made’’ to change the penalty rates, because the modern award recognised the ‘‘disabilities of working at unsociable times’’.

It also said the industries already had relatively low pay rates.

3:46pm on 18 Mar 2013

Standard and Poor's sees a high risk that Spain, Italy, Portugal and France will not be able to carry through necessary reforms as the unemployed become less willing to put up with austerity, said S&P's Germany head Torsten Hinrichs.

"The high unemployment in Spain, Italy and France is socially explosive," Hinrichs was quoted as saying in Monday's Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung.

"There has to be a social consensus for saving measures. High unemployment ... does not help."

Hinrichs said the people of Spain and Portugal had already proven they were willing to bear with austerity measures, but "this cannot continue forever".

In Italy, there was the further danger that "a new government may not be strong enough for the still necessary reforms to strengthen growth," he said.

Hinrichs said S&P still rated Germany as a triple A with stable outlook and did not see any reason for concern: "It is one of the few AAA and stable countries that we still have in Europe".

3:24pm on 18 Mar 2013

Investors have shown confidence in the outlook for Australia’s largest listed rail company Aurizon after they snapped up the latest tranche of shares to be offloaded by the Queensland government.

Shares in the company formerly known as QR National rose by as much as 7 cents today to $4.11, on a day when the market slumped by almost 2 per cent. In comparison, other transport stocks including Aurizon’s arch rival, Asciano, fell further than the broader market.

The state government has sold 200 million shares in Aurizon at $4.03 a piece to institutional investors, which was at a discount of just 1 cent a share to its closing price on Friday. Typically, sell-downs of a similar size by major shareholders are priced at a 5 per cent discount.

The $806 million deal represents a profit of about $300 million to the government since the rail company was floated in late 2010. It reduces the state’s stake in Aurizon from 18.2 per cent to 8.9 per cent.

3:11pm on 18 Mar 2013

The Bank of Japan today reappointed Masayoshi Amamiya, a mastermind of quantitative easing, to oversee a key division charged with drafting monetary policy, a sign it is gearing up for a radical shift in its policy framework under a new leadership that takes over this week.

The expected new BOJ governor, Haruhiko Kuroda, has pledged to do whatever it takes to achieve the central bank's new 2 per cent inflation target focusing on expanding its balance sheet with purchases of longer-dated government bonds.

The reappointment of Amamiya, a 57-year-old career central banker admired for his skills in coming up with creative banking ideas, may heighten the chance the central bank will shift its policy closer to the quantitative easing campaign of the last decade.

"Amamiya is the architect of many of the BOJ's existing policy frameworks. His return now may be to review them and prepare for an overhaul in time for the BOJ's next rate review in April," said Yasuhide Yajima, chief economist at NLI Research Institute in Tokyo.

As we enter the final hour of trade, here's the best and worst performers on the day.

2:47pm on 18 Mar 2013

Singapore Telecommunications said it has hired Credit Suisse and Morgan Stanley to conduct a strategic review of its Optus Satellite, a business that could be worth at least $1.6 billion.

The strategic review, according to bankers and analysts, could mean an outright sale or an initial public offering of a unit that sells TV, telephony and broadband services to more than 2 million subscribers, and had revenue of $319 million for the financial year that ended March 31, 2012.

Sachin Gupta, an analyst at Nomura Securities, said the asset could be worth between $1.5 billion and $2 billion as the margin for the satellite business could be about 80 percent.

2:36pm on 18 Mar 2013

Markets across the region seem to have caught Cypriot fever:

Nikkei(Japan): -2.1%

Shanghai: -1%

Taiwan: -1%

South Korea: -0.6%

Singapore: -0.7%

New Zealand: -0.9%

2:22pm on 18 Mar 2013

For a bit of a change in pace, here's something from our Money team. Everyone loves the idea of buying stocks that double in price. But how do you spot them? Nathan Bell has 10 quick pointers:

The NBN will hurt regional broadcasters, and TV stations should get free access to the network, Seven West Media chairman Kerry Stokes says.

Seven’s regional Queensland network will not be able to afford the NBN when it replaces existing infrastructure, Mr Stokes told a joint Senate committee hearing on proposed media reforms on Monday.

The regional TV business currently uses its own transmitters and cables to connect its various newsrooms, he said.

‘‘Once we go to NBN that’s a whole different ball game,’’ Mr Stokes told the committee.

‘‘We have to actually pay NBN to use their facilities, and their facilities are much more expensive than our transmitters.’’

Arrangements are yet to be finalised on how television networks will use the NBN, and Mr Stokes said his company wants free access.

1:48pm on 18 Mar 2013

Coca-Cola Amatil has announced that its chief executive Terry Davis will step down next year after more than 12 years running the beverage group.

He will retire on August 31 next year, said CCA Chairman, David Gonski.

“Over the last 18 months there has been much speculation concerning the tenure of our long serving Group Managing Director, Terry Davis. I am therefore very pleased to confirm that Terry will remain as Group Managing Director until 31 August 2014.

“In his 11 years so far as Group Managing Director, Terry has made a significant and lasting contribution in transforming CCA into a world-class, premium multi-beverage business. The market capitalisation of CCA has increased from $3.5 billion to $11.4 billion, Group return on capital has increased from just over 7 per cent in 2001 to 24 per cent today, generating total shareholder returns of nearly 400 per cent.”

CCA shares are down 2 per cent to $14.93.

1:38pm on 18 Mar 2013

China's new home prices rose in February from a year ago for a second consecutive month, though gains are expected to ease after the government unveiled this month tougher tax plans to curb real estate speculation.

Average new home prices across China climbed 2.1 per cent last month, versus a year-on-year increase of 0.8 per cent in January, according to Reuters' calculations from data released by the National Bureau of Statistics today.

China's cabinet announced on March 1 that it planned to introduce a 20 per cent capital gains tax and higher downpayments and mortgage rates for second-time home buyers in cities where prices are deemed to be rising too fast.

"This is not going to be sustained after the government's new rules. Price rises will ease, but will not head south," said Jianguang Shen, chief China economist with Mizuho Securities Asia.

1:22pm on 18 Mar 2013

Here's an interesting post from the Lowy Institute for International Policy: Who is to blame for austerity?

The concerted global fiscal stimulus of 2009 is an example of excellent policy-making, the more outstanding because subsequent policies have been ineffectual in addressing the weak recovery in advanced economies. Why did success morph so quickly into the fiscal policy lethargy of the past three years?

Usually, economies bounce back quickly after a downturn: the greater the downturn, the faster the recovery. Not so this time. Nearly five years after the nadir, the US and the UK still have unemployment close to 8 per cent and the European Union has almost 12 per cent (this doesn't just reflect the shocking unemployment figures in Spain and Greece; even France has unemployment well over 10 per cent).

Given the success of the 2009 fiscal stimulus (a rare example of international economic coordination, associated with the London G20 meeting), the premature shift to austerity in 2010 needs some explanation.

Part of the answer lies in the very success of the 2009 stimulus. In early 2009 the IMF was forecasting a GDP plunge of 2.5 per cent for the advanced countries over the course of that year, but the fall turned out to be less than 0.5 per cent. The predicted growth of only 1per cent during 2010 turned out to be over 2 per cent. This was hardly tear-away growth, but was enough to shift the focus from the immediate need for fiscal expansion towards the longer term issue of unsustainable government debt.